Piraha, complexity & universal: Another shot

[Tom Givon]

Dear FUNK people,

I was disappointed with the discussion that followed Dan Everett' 
submission on Piraha a while back, regarding syntactic complexity and 
universals. At the time I thought that the issues of more interest (at 
least to me) somehow got side-stepped. So, I am attaching  (in two 
formats) an attempt to revive that discussion. I do this rather than 
making this a long message (3.5 pp.), so that y'all can decide whether 
you want to bother. At the very least, this will give Dan one more 
opportunity to convince the (sympathetic) skeptics

Best,  TG